


What Comes After

by katydidmischief (cassiejamie)



Category: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dystopia, M/M, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-05
Updated: 2012-02-04
Packaged: 2017-10-30 15:11:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/333091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassiejamie/pseuds/katydidmischief
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's several years of a silently carried out Cold War; there's always a finger on the button and in the end, they're both pushed so closely together that, afterward, no one is ever really sure who started it, though everyone knows that it ends because there's no one left to keep the war machines going.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

When it happens, the team is in Moscow and Will thinks it's ironic and appropriate that they're back in the place it started.

(It's only been a few years, but the damage from the Hendricks mission has never fully been repaired and the Russians never do stop believing that the IMF—and, by proxy, the United States—had something to do with it. It's several years of a silently carried out Cold War; there's always a finger on the button and in the end, they're both pushed so closely together that, afterward, no one is ever really sure who started it, though everyone knows that it ends because there's no one left to keep the war machines going.)

The bombings are few. Just enough to wipe entire governments off the map and smaller, local ones pop up in their place; everyone is touched by the disaster, not one person left on the planet can say their entire family and their friends got out alive: everyone has a story that includes the line, "My [loved one] went in the [first, second, third] wave," and everyone empathizes.

It's good, in a way, because when the dust clears from the last wave, there's just enough love left between people that it's peaceful. So peaceful. Alliances form between countries that'd so recently been at each others' throats and unlike the early days, when everyone hoarded canned goods and blankets, it's common to see someone sharing their stockpile, tradesmen helping to fix houses for nothing more than the generosity of seeing kids sleep indoors.

However, it's still an entirely different life and there's pockets of crime here and there; in the five months it takes them to get from Moscow to Paris to London to New York, they nearly get robbed of their things more than once. Benji has to trade his last working laptop for their lives in Madrid, and Will, poor technophile Will, turns over his iPhone on the slow trudge from New York to DC.

The capitol bore the brunt of the war, though the Russians hadn't accounted for the fact that the President hadn't been at the White House that first wave. It'd given everyone time to figure out a plan before New York was hit next and well, most of the leadership with it. The Cheyenne Mountain attack wiped out the rest, and NORAD... well, even so many miles down, it doesn't matter if they're alive because the ground above (including Colorado Springs) is a radioactive wasteland.

Will gets them to Headquarters from memory; they can't stay too long, but they're able to scrounge up some gear and a car and enough gas from the other sedans to get their asses out of the red zone.

They drive for a while, bartering for gas with the things that are valuable now: toilet tissue, current newspapers, and shortwave radios, all of which they find in abandoned stores, houses, and government buildings. A few days later, they roll into New Orleans and Ethan breathes a sigh of relief.

(It's one of the few places left untouched. If it weren't for the lack of televisions and the rolling brownouts, you'd never know there'd been a war.)

The apartment Will finds for them has hardwood floors and two bedrooms. It's small but it's not like they're going to find anything else with an income of zero (read: stockpile of nothing), and the person who'd given it to him had done so only because Will had let it slip that the four of them were sleeping in the car.

"Oh, god," Jane moans. "The shower _works_."

"Guys, there's beds," Benji announces.

Ethan just looks between them all and smiles, the kind of smile that's weary but oh so grateful. Will hates that they've seen it so much and he kisses Ethan, hoping to wipe whatever is bothering him away; he knows Ethan takes it on himself to protect them all, there just has to be a point where Ethan stops taking EVERYTHING onto himself—he's still only human.

"Want to celebrate? There's the place down on Dauphine that'll make anything out of what we bring them..." Will says as he takes stock of what they've got in the trunk and if it could be stretched into a meal for four. Seriously, they've got to find work of some kind.

Ethan learns how to drywall from a new friend and Benji gets a job with one of the few technical companies still standing; Jane gets hired as a waitress at the Dauphine restaurant they love so much. Will, he never quite figures out what to do other than teach, and even though he struggles with not stopping fights via chokehold, the superintendent loves him as much as the kids do and the parents never do get upset when someone goes home and announces that, today, Mr. Brandt taught us how to down an attacker with two fingers.

They start to adjust.

Then the fall-out starts—there's the inevitable food shortage, too few farmers in this part of the world to keep up with the demand and Ethan wipes out several grocery stores before he loads them into the car. The peaceful alliances fall apart in the wake of the famine and the diseases that pop up; Will's glad that they'd been vaccinated right before the last mission, or they'd all be falling prey to the plagues that are spreading across the planet.

Passing by one of the quarantined areas on the way to California, it's Benji who says, "We won't be safe. When the titers in our blood drop, we'll get sick, too."

Ethan reaches over and clasps Benji's arm, and tells him, "Long time before that happens. These outbreaks should be over by the time we'd need to get updates on the vaccinations."

"What if they aren't?"

"Then we'll deal with it."

It's so matter-of-fact and so very Ethan that Will smiles at the back of Ethan's head, then looks to Jane and sees that she, too, is grinning. It feels normal.

"How much farther?"

"Couple of hours. We're almost through Nevada."

That news causes Will and Jane to break into song and Ethan threatens to pull over and shoot them both; Benji finally cracks a smile himself, joining into their badly done rendition of California and he never brings up the topic again.

(In San Diego, Will teaches again and Jane goes back to waitressing; Ethan gets hired as a painter, Benji ends up at a hospital as an orderly. It's only two months before they're on the road to Iowa.)


	2. New York to DC

In New York, they have to shower in disinfectant before they're allowed past the entrance gates and when someone asks where they're going because if they're headed into Manhattan they'll need hazmat suits, it's Will who says, "Washington."

"State or DC?"

"DC."

"Man, I hope you're on the outskirts—they say no one will be able to get close to the White House for a century."

Will digests that knowledge; they'd known, of course, that the first place hit was DC, but it's hard to hear nonetheless and he thinks about the family he'd left behind (gone now) and the friends, the coworkers. It hits him as they trudge toward the crowded train station, that this is not a dream.

This is happening.

Ethan hugs him close and murmurs, "I'm sorry, Will."

"It's not your fault."

"I'm still sorry."

Ethan doesn't let go as he digs out the very last of their money and buys them passage to a ramshackle station at the edge of the DC safezone.


	3. Four Years Gone

Some things become constants: Will almost always teaches—be it history, french, self-defense—and Ethan's almost always in construction. They both, somehow, run through tee shirts like they're replaceable (once upon a time, they were). Benji works most anything, usually leaning toward technical but he's worked in hospitals, retail, and food service, the latter of which Jane refuses to do again after the Kansas City incident. She finds jobs at the places Will and Ethan do, a secretary or a PA mostly. (The title depends only on where and who does the hiring.)

They get used to being nomads again, in an entirely different way.

They get used to not being able to help when that's all they did before; Will doesn't feel guilty when they drive by the quarantined zones any more. Ethan doesn't even notice them.

Four years in, as Ethan had predicted, the outbreaks start to drop as the world starts to stabilize. It's going to be decades before they get back anywhere close to where they were before, if that ever happens (it won't), but the rollercoaster they've been on since the war... it feels like the drops are coming less often, but there's still the reality that for every climb they make, they're going to have to come down.

Ethan wonders, in silence, what disaster comes next, and then quickly lets the thought go. He chooses to focus on his family instead, because that's what they are now: a family, not just a team, and he can't imagine life without any of them.

"Ethan," Will calls from the front seat of their car, then points through the windshield at the rising crest of the horizon, the rubble that breaks it as they get closer.

They can't see the White House from this distance—wouldn't be able to get close anyway—nor the Washington Monument, said to have broken in the middle like a snapped sword. What they can see as they run the edge of the red zone, is the decimated buildings. Piles of white stone, red brick, and steel, broken bodies beneath it and Will tries not to think about that part. He glances at his watch as he forces the thought away, and murmurs, "Twenty minutes to Headquarters."

Benji's driving today or, from here, it'd be more like forty; there are more police units and local militias nowadays, but not this far into DC. There's no one there to see how Benji pushes the sedan to top speed, listening as the engine whines in response: it's been pushed past the normal bounds of what a vehicle can do. It's been house and home, transportation, storage, and cupboard. While odd to think, but they'd all admit—under duress, mind you—that when the day comes that the little four-door five-speed finally falls apart, they'll mourn for it.

He spins them down a side street in direct opposition to the one-way signs and skids them to a halt in front of a building that's seen better days; the parking lot off in the distance has a sapling growing through the asphalt and Will thinks of the TV series he saw once on Discovery, the one where scientists showed how the planet would heal itself in the aftermath of people and he thinks, _Science in action_.

Inside, the IMF's entry way (plain, nondescript) looks exactly the same as it did the last time they'd seen it: chairs turned over, dust on every surface, Susanne's desk jarred and splintered right down the middle. Unlike last time, though, the generator with the supply that'd kept the building's computers running for several months after the power plant had been destroyed has run dry. There computer locks, retinal scanners, fingerprint analyzers... every door opens without needing any of the security measures and with each one they pass through, the harsh reality sets in that the Agency's been ransacked by the few brave souls willing to wander this close to the red zone.

Will grimaces, says nothing. He leaves Ethan in what was once their team's office, looking through papers with calloused fingers and goes on the hunt for pen or paint.

Benji sits in Yusuf's lab while Jane watches him; he runs his hands over the old keyboards, the broken monitors, at what was once his station and sighs, saying, "It used to be easy, you know?"

"I know."

"I thought I was done with the grieving part," he adds.

She gives him a wane smile and glances into the hallway, sees Will walking along with a can of bright orange spray paint, then looks back at Benji and tells him, "You can't be done with something that you haven't started."

"Four years, Jane."

"Four years we've spent trying to survive, working or traveling. We haven't had the time to let ourselves mourn—and that's different than intellectually accepting what's happening." She says the last part with some firmness.

"That should be enough."

She murmurs, "I know," again, and then, in the distance, hears someone calling for them. Instincts, even now, are crying out for her to reach for a holster, a weapon, though there's none to be found. Instead, she creeps along the hall with Benji at her back to find Will and Ethan standing amid the chaos of the analysts' bullpen, another person eyeing her and she lets out a noise that's a sob and a laugh.

The Director is in plain clothes, but it's him and Jane feels her knees start to give out.

"Easy, Jane," he says, guiding her to a chair, then leans against one of the steel desks and pats her shoulder. "It's good to see you again."

He tells them about the handful of agents he knows are still alive, the fewer analysts that've gotten word to him that they're still here; there are a few IMF satellite facilities intact that occasionally a former member of the Agency traipses through, leaving serial numbers or favorite cover names written on the walls. He goes through them all every few months, running the circuit in the hopes that he might see a familiar face and to take stock of those names and numbers in case a new one has appeared. It's been a long time since the latter happened though.

He tells them about the new government slowly being crafted in conference rooms in Boston and Philly and when he finishes that story, he asks, "How have you been?"

It's a loaded question.

(By the time they've finished talking, it's dark out, but the Director knows every stop they'd made on the way back home, every place they've lived, every job they've worked. They've told him about their hidden caches, though not their exact locations, and their plans to head into Canada since there's rumors of work. The differences in the barter systems around the country and the shifting state lines.

He listens to it all in quiet: these people were his primary team, so incredibly good at what they did then, and he sends up another prayer to a God he's not sure he believes in anymore that, someday, they won't have to work these odd jobs and live in crappy apartments. He invites them back to his place instead of giving voice to the sadness, and they accept.

When he wakes in the morning and finds Ethan and Will wrapped up together in the guest room, Jane and Benji sharing the sofabed, he wishes he could say he's surprised, but there's too many miles at their backs, too much shared time, and he's glad, really, that they've got each other. He makes the last of his coffee—been saving it for a special occasion—and tries not to let them see, when the smell lures them in, how he wishes they'd stay a little longer.)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt](http://ghotocol-kink.livejournal.com/1494.html?thread=439510#t439510) at [ghotocol_kink](http://ghotocol-kink.livejournal.com/).


End file.
